Our brain is where we think thoughts. It’s also where thoughts go to die.

You see, our brain has one job: keep us alive. As our need for Survival is satisfied, we start exploring ways of staying alive more efficiently, improving the quality of our lives, and helping others stay alive. The moment our Survival is threatened, however, our brain sets all that aside and reverts to its primary mission.

There’s one problem: our brain is terrible at distinguishing between different types of threats. It doesn’t matter whether the threat is physical or emotional. If it threatens any of our basic needs, our brain will invoke the same fight-or-flight response to get us out of danger.

When you have the idea to do something bold, you have five seconds to act on it before you brain will shut the idea down.

The One Password You’ll Ever Need to Remember

If I don’t have to memorize something, I prefer not to. Albert Einstein said, “Intelligence is not the ability to remember information, but knowing where to find it.” In Getting Things Done, David Allen wrote, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” I’m in good company.

I used to devote an inordinate amount of mental energy to remembering passwords. I tried to follow the recommended practices of incorporating numbers and punctuation and never reused passwords across sites. I would take something distinct about the site as a mnemonic and derive a unique-but-relevant password. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I reset a password only to retrace the same steps into the mind palace and arrive at the same password I had set before. (I know this because some sites don’t let you reset your password to what it was.)

Then I met 1Password. Now I delegate (almost) all of my password concerns to it, freeing up my attention to focus on what I need to do instead of the details of doing it.

I’ve loved tear-off stationery pads as long as I can remember. You know the ones—they’re like Post-It Notes with a form printed on them. Shopping lists, to-do lists, packing lists, babysitter instructions… Once, my parents bought a “While You Were Out” pad to keep by the phone in the kitchen. I was thrilled.

Paper is powerful, and stationery pads give you a starting point to help you quickly create a powerful little document, sometimes as little as 3″×3″. You knew you wouldn’t miss something because you had a template. All you had to do was fill out the fields.

Fast-forward to today. The world is much more digital now but we have a lot of the same workflows—meeting agendas and minutes, quarterly reports, envelopes… Have you ever started a new document by creating a copy of and old document? You know how helpful it is to have a template to start from instead of starting from scratch every time.

Did you know the Mac has a built-in feature that lets you turn any document into a digital stationery pad? It’s a great way to get a jump-start on any workflow.

This is a hammer. It pounds nails. It’s very good at it.

Once upon a time I tried driving a screw into drywall with a hammer. I had the hammer close by, I didn’t want to go track down a screwdriver, so I ignored the threads and treated the screw like it was a nail. It went in surprisingly smoothly, all things considered. I was well-pleased that my laziness had paid off.

…for about five seconds. Then I discovered that the screw came back out even easier than it went in. I didn’t even need the hammer for that. In the end, my laziness just created more work. I had to track down a screwdriver and some drywall anchors (after learning what drywall anchors are) and finish the job the way I should have started it in the first place.

Email is a tool. It does some things well. If you misuse it, you’re going to cause more work for yourself.

Here are five tools you should be using instead of seeing every situation as a problem email can solve.